For all discrete nations under the sonne,
Do use at thys day as they fyrst begonne:
And never doo change, but styll do frequent,
Theyr old guyse, what ever fond folkes do invent.
But we here in England lyke fooles and apes,
Do by our vayne fangles deserve mocks and japes,
For all kynde of countreys dooe us deryde,
In no constant custome sythe we abyde
For we never knowe howe in our aray,
We may in fyrme fashion stedfastly stay."
Randle Holme complained that in his time (1680) Englishmen were as changeable as the moon in their dress, "in which respect," says he, "we are termed the Frenchmen's apes, imitating them in all their fantastick devised fashions of garbs." Acad. of armory, book iii. ch. 5.
Scene 3. Page 452.
Claud. Stalk on, stalk on, the fowl sits.
It has been already shown that the stalking bull was equally common with the stalking horse. It was sometimes used for decoying partridges into a tunnelling net, or cage of net work, in the form of a tun, with doors. The process is described at large, with a print, in Willughby's Ornithology, 1678, folio, p. 34, where an account is also given of the stalking-horse, ox, stag, &c.
Howel in his Vocabulary, sect. xxxv. seems to have mistaken the tun or net into which the birds were driven, for the stalking bull itself. Sometimes, as in hunting the wolf, an artificial bush and a wooden screen were used to stalk with. See Clamorgan, Chasse du loup, 1595, 4to, p. 29.
Scene 3. Page 455.
Leon. She tore the letter into a thousand halfpence.
Mr. Theobald explains this "into a thousand pieces of the same bigness," as if Beatrice had torn the letter by rule and compass. Mr. Steevens more properly supposes halfpence to mean small pieces; but his note would have been less imperfect if he had added that the halfpence of Elizabeth were of silver, and about the size of a modern silver penny.